John Davis, Davis also spelled Davys (born c. 1550, Sandridge, near Dartmouth, Devon, Eng.—died Dec. 29/30, 1605, off Bintan Island, near Singapore) English navigator who attempted to find the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific.

Davis appears to have first proposed his plan to look for the Northwest Passage in 1583 to Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I. In 1585 he began his first northwestern expedition. Coming upon the icebound east shore of Greenland, he headed south, rounded Cape Farewell, and then sailed northward along the coast of western Greenland. Turning in what he thought was the direction of China, he sailed some distance up Cumberland Sound, which cuts into Baffin Island, but eventually turned back.

He attempted to find the Northwest Passage again in 1586 and 1587. On the last of these voyages he passed through the strait named for him, entered Baffin Bay, and coasted northward along western Greenland to Disko Island, about 70° N. Davis showed some imagination in his dealings with the Greenland Eskimo. He took musicians with him and had his sailors dance to the music, which helped to establish cordial relations with these sociable people. Cape Walsingham and Cumberland Sound are among the many Arctic points that he named.

Davis invented a device (called the backstaff, or Davis quadrant) used until the 18th century for determining latitude by reading the angle of elevation of the sun, and he wrote a treatise on navigation, The Seaman’s Secret (1594). His work The World’s Hydrographical Description (1595) deals with the Northwest Passage.

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Next to seek the passage was another Englishman, John Davis, one of the finest of the early seamen and something of a scientist as well. In three voyages, 1585–87, Davis rediscovered Greenland (lost to Europeans since the decline of the Norse settlements); he visited the southeast coast and sailed up the west coast to beyond Disko Island (72° N). He also traced the coasts of Baffin...

...most serious being that it required the observer to look directly into the Sun. Coloured shades were fitted to the crosspiece, but the decisive improvement was made in 1594 by the English navigator John Davis. His instrument, called the backstaff because it was used with the observer’s back to the Sun, remained common even after 1731 when the octant (an early form of the modern sextant) was...

...Cartier, the French navigator, explored the St. Lawrence estuary. In 1576 the English explorer Sir Martin Frobisher found the bay named after him. Between 1585 and 1587, the English navigator John Davis explored Cumberland Sound and the western shore of Greenland to 73° N; although he met “a mighty block of ice,” he reported that “the passage is most probable and the...